r windin' myself like a serpent about him, till I get him
fairly in my power; and when I do--then for one sharp, deadly sting
into his heart:--ay, and, like the serpent, it's in my tongue that
sting lies--from that tongue the poison must come that will give me the
revenge that I've been long waitin' for."

"You speak," replied the priest, "and, indeed, you look more like
an evil spirit than a man, Anthony. This language is disgraceful and
unchristian, and such as no human being should utter. How can you think
of death with such principles in your heart?"

"I'll tell you how I think on death: I'm afeared of it when I think of
that poor, heartbroken woman, Lady Gourlay; but when I think of him--of
him--I do hope and expect that my last thought in this world will be the
delightful one that I've had my revenge on him."

"And you would risk the misery of another world for the gratification
of one evil passion in this! Oh, God help you, and forgive you, and turn
your heart!"

"God help me, and forgive me, and turn my heart! but not so far as he is
consarned. I neither wish it, nor pray for it, and what's more, if you
were fifty priests, I never will. Let us drop this subject, then, for so
long as we talk of him, I feel as if the blood in my ould veins was all
turned into fire."

The priest saw and felt that this was true, and resolved to be guided
by the hint he had unconsciously received. To remonstrate with him upon
Christian principles, in that mood of mind, would, he knew, be to no
purpose. If there were an assailable point about him, he concluded, from
his own words, that it was in connection with the sufferings of Lady
Gourlay, and the fate of her child. On this point, therefore, he
resolved to sound him, and ascertain, without, if possible, alarming
him, how far he would go on--whether he felt disposed to advance at all,
or not.

"Well," said the priest, "since you are resolved upon an act of
vengeance--against which, as a Christian priest and a Christian man, I
doubly protest--I think it only right that you should perform an act
of justice also. You know it is wrong to confound the innocent with the
guilty. There is Lady Gourlay, with the arrow of grief, and probably
despair, rankling in her heart for years. Now, you could restore that
woman to happiness--you could restore her lost child to happiness, and
bid the widowed mother's heart leap for joy."

"It isn't for that I'd do it, or it would, maybe, be done l